By Steven Michaels
I would venture to say that HALLOWEEN 5: THE REVENGE OF MICHAEL MYERS is much worse than the Producer's Cut of HALLOWEEN 6 (though it is better than theatrical version of that film). Simply put, the behavior of fearsome killer Michael Myers in the fifth installment in the series is just ludicrous. One of the prime examples I will cite is the sequence in which said killer is chasing down his niece Jamie (a task that takes him the entirety of the fourth and fifth entries) behind the wheel of a speeding car! This completely defeats the true purpose and character of Michael Myers. Further, when he gets out of the car he is clearly lit by the headlights and moving around like some football star. It is in this sequence, as well as many others in the movie, that the suspense and fright factor is completely lost.
The story in HALLOWEEN 5 is contrived and bland. It is a shame that Donald Pleasance had to do this movie (but less of a shame than the fact that his last film, HALLOWEEN 6, which he was originally optimistic about, was edited into a terrible mess following his death). One of the most ludicrous sequences in the movie, besides the car stalking, is the scene in which he takes his mask off! Once again, this completely defeats the purpose of his character: to remain a mysterious killing machine that is no longer a man. Even more ludicrous: he sheds a tear!!! That's right, the unstoppable killing machine is crying... because he can't help himself? Please.
It could be stated that HALLOWEEN 5 is responsible for the mess that HALLOWEEN 6 turned out to be, as it introduced the mysterious "Stranger", who appears to save Myers from each of his predicaments. This adds a new piece to something that should not have been a puzzle at all. And what's worse, it took them six years to explain it! Their mistake was in planning to release Part 6 the year after Part 5, so that they would have released three HALLOWEEN films in a row in three years. But those plans fell through, and writer Daniel Farrands was left with the task of trying to explain the mysteries and questions that the fifth entry raised. Of course, this was before producers came to the conclusion that they could simply ignore unfavorable entries in the series in order to remain "true to the original" (a la H20). This is not to say that I think H20 indeed stayed true to the original. Rather, it stayed true to Scream and the sorry bunch of self-aware, self-referential imitation horror films that followed it in the mid to late '90s. But all of the entries starting with the fifth have done laughable job at continuing the storyline which, arguably, did not need to be continued after the failure of HALLOWEEN III.